


To Hold Summer's Breeze (In My Arms)

by jazzjo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of the team - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gift Fic to itsamagicalplace (melinda-qiaolian on tumblr) for the Philinda Secret Valentine</p>
<p>As requested, unabashed fluff :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hold Summer's Breeze (In My Arms)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itsamagicalplace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsamagicalplace/gifts).



> To Emma:   
> This was really quite different than anything I would typically write, so I was pretty stumped at first, but I hope it turned out alright. Happy Valentine's and hopefully this was to your liking.

_The first thing he had fallen for was her scowl._

 

As she leaned against his shoulder, his hands threaded through her hair. Phil pressed a kiss to the top of her head and grinned as he saw a slanted smile blossom on her face. It was so different from the first expression she had ever allowed him to see. 

 

Even now, as her arm was looped around his waist and his held her close to his side, she didn’t say a word. 

 

Phil nearly let a chuckle reverberate through his chest at the thought of how absurd it had been that he had fallen for her. How he had fallen so hard and so fast. 

 

He had fallen over his own feet the first time he had seen her. Tripping over his shoelaces and face-planting right in front of her unimpressed face during their first hand to hand combat class. That had been an interesting way to meet. Not five minutes later she had flipped him (with her thighs, no less). Their sparring match had ended with her staring down at him with half a smirk and a glint in her eyes. 

 

Burrowing her nose into the sleeve of his sweater, Melinda sighed lightly. At that sound, Phil found the tension fleeing from his shoulders immediately. 

 

It was rare that they would have such a peaceful moment nowadays. They were no longer freshman cadets. Being final year agents-in-training meant that they were fighting it out with the rest of their class. There were only so many ways to ensure that their first (and often rather permanent) assignment was a good one. 

 

Phil allowed his mind to wander. He looked back on all the times the quiet, innocent-looking diminutive girl in his arms had managed to get away with all she had done. It had at least been twice as much as most people could not even dream of accomplishing. 

 

A cold touch dragged him out of those fond memories. 

 

Flinching away instinctively and squirming at the touch, Phil protested with a childish whine. While Melinda allowed herself to giggle freely, she withdrew her icy hands from where they had met his neck. 

 

_The second thing had been her eyes, but the third had been her laugh, in all its variations._

 

He rolled his eyes with mirth, swatting at where her hands had been right before that before pulling her back close to him. Phil pulled the fleece blanket that covered their legs up around their shoulders. Thrusting the mug of hot chocolate that they had been sharing into Melinda’s hands, he grinned. 

 

She smirked one of those slanted grins again, combined with a lilt in her voice. 

 

"This is only to stop me from touching you again", she uttered, making him nearly fall over himself (yes, even though he was seated). 

 

He shrugged at the question (it was part of the reason, he would admit). As Melinda sipped at the warm liquid, he reached over to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. 

 

He was, admittedly, quite thankful for the campus-wide blackout. 

 

They hadn’t had a moment to themselves in days.   They had been going on both trial and actual missions, as well as attending all their final classes. Phil couldn't help but wish they didn't have to take their year-end assessments. 

 

Well, between that and the pranks. They had covered every toilet seat in the dormitory block with green food colouring beneath a layer of toothpaste.

 

Seeing the multitude of cadets fleeing the washrooms with posteriors the colour of the Hulk had been more than worth the hours they had spent executing the plan. 

 

Not that he really needed it, in spite of the cold. 

 

_The fourth thing he had fallen for was the warmth in her cool exterior, like a summer’s breeze._

 

Not when he was holding her in his arms. 

 

 

* * *

 

_She hadn’t seen those sweatshirts in years._

 

And yet there they were, lain out plain on the stark white of her pillow. 

 

Typically Melinda would have been wary that someone had made their way into her bunk without her permission or awareness, but the Peggy Carter and Captain America sweatshirts that lay on her pillow  proved enough about who the trespasser had been to appease her. 

 

Reaching one hand towards the soft fabric that held so many memories for her — for them, really — Melinda picked up the larger of the two sweatshirts, breathing in deeply the scent that still held a distinct place of memory in her mind. 

 

She heard the door slide open, footsteps approaching her that paused as the door shut. 

 

“I was wondering where these had gotten to,” She remarked, shrouding her words with half a smirk without turning to face him. 

 

She sensed the smile before the words came, that kind, unrelentingly positive grin that he reserved just for a select few people. The one that all too often was saved for the same people who saw his most pained expressions. 

 

“Couldn’t split them up, could I?” He replied, placing a hand softly on her shoulder in warning before wrapping his arms around her from behind. 

 

Turning slightly in his arms to face him partially, she pulled the Peggy Carter sweatshirt over his head as best as she could. Hearing the amused chuckle that had rumbled from the figure before her, Melinda swatted lightly (well, her version of lightly, anyhow) at his chest and rose up onto the tips of her toes to get the article of clothing fully over his head. 

 

Wasn’t her fault his head was big (and balding). 

 

When Phil had finally looked down and realised which of the two sweaters he was wearing, he let out an offended exclamation before she nudged him with a knuckle. 

 

“Seriously?” He muttered, half annoyed and half amused, “How many decades after the academy and you’re still making us do the sweater swap?” 

 

Melinda just shrugged, putting her own head through the hole in the Captain America sweater and breathing in the familiar scent. 

 

His arms still wrapped loosely around her waist kept her close, her head leaning against his chest. 

 

“Looks better on you anyway,” He conceded, murmuring into her hair, “Always has.”

 

_If his arms were home, she was glad she had found her way back to them._

 

They swayed silently, her head on his shoulder and his hand on the small of her back. It was as close to a slow dance as they were going to get, soundless music thrumming around them as their bodies were held flush to each others’. 

 

The quiet of the empty hallways — after hours in the Playground were silent once the kids of their team had stopped bickering and gotten to sleep in their quarters — pulled away the defences that the both of them had built up over the years. 

 

Melinda’s strictness fell away, leaving her tendency to be silent and the warmth that she hid beneath cool collectedness. 

 

Phil’s cheeriness chipped and broke away to reveal the more erratic frustration and volatility beneath it, his smiles brighter but more prone to flaking away with a glimpse of distress he would never show the others. 

 

There was no hiding with the other person in the room, for either of them. 

 

Spinning Melinda around the room in wide, fluid strides, Phil relished the feeling of her in his arms, the view of her dark hair splaying about and the low laughter that the occasional stumble elicited. 

 

If anything, the fact that they were both in sweatshirts that belonged to the other person made this moment sweeter than if they had been in a suit and gown. (And she didn’t have heels on, which was a plus in any case.)

 

Melinda tilted her head up, placing a feather-light kiss on his cheek as their dance slowed to a halt. 

 

His gallant bow once he released her from his arms made the left corner of her lips curve upwards, her arms wrapping around her torso to shield herself from the sudden chill. 

 

Soon enough she found herself back in his warm embrace, the door locked and duvets from both their rooms spread on the floor of her room strategically with freshly made hot chocolate and two Captain America comic books placed beside them as she leaned against his chest. 

 

_There was no place like home, even when she was always looking to the sky._

 

They laughed at jokes they had shared all those years before, the same throaty wry chuckle and the same dorky guffaw. The base heater warmed the room, but not more than their proximity to each other, and when Phil got more hot chocolate on his mouth than into it Melinda smirked as she swiped at it with her thumb. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes they missed it. 

 

Melinda missed the vast expanse of skies unfolding before her, what she saw completely manipulated and controlled by her manoeuvring of the plane she was piloting. Phil missed more than anything else the feeling of doing good, of being, in his own eyes, at least part of the hero that Steve Rogers had been. 

 

But those days were behind them now. 

 

Placing the tray of hot chocolate (homemade, without half the sugar that Phil would have put in there if she had allowed him to get his hands on it) on his lap, Melinda pushed the wheelchair he sat in out onto their porch. 

 

It was warm enough for them to spend the morning outside, and enough years being forced out of bed when her side of the bed had grown cold had trained Phil Coulson well in the art of waking up early. 

 

She set out blankets on the ground, two layers of soft duvets on the ground that she helped him out of his chair to sit on, and then the fleece his mother had made for her so many years ago tucked around them both. 

 

The sun was just rising, warm golden seeping into the purples and pinks of the horizon. 

 

He lay his head on her shoulder, an arm around her waist to hold her close to him. 

 

If he hadn’t been sitting so close (though he definitely was; he had occupied the spot next to her for the past couple of decades, after all), he wouldn’t have heard the gasp that she let out when the rising sun’s light caught the light drizzle, a rainbow faintly forming across the sky right before their eyes. 

 

Gulping down a hearty swallow of the hot chocolate, Phil allowed the drink to leave a brown smear on his upper lip before he leaned closer to her and placed a kiss on her cheek. 

 

Her initial expression was one of horror, eyes widened and lips parted before the crows’ feet and laugh lines that had accumulated over the years reappeared as she chuckled lowly, touching her cheek to his to return the favour. 

 

“The kids will be here today, yes?” He asked as he used a slightly shaking hand to wipe away the chocolate on her cheek.

 

If you asked him, she was just as beautiful as she had been the first day he’d met her, stammering and blushing furiously, not to mention with his face planted in the ground at her feet. And he was just as dorky, if you asked her. 

 

As he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear fondly, she adjusted his glasses as she replied, “Jemma said they would be here by mid morning, but knowing the boys (and Skye), it’ll probably be closer to noon than anything.”

 

“Well,” He laughed, “Running S.H.I.E.L.D. is a very time consuming job, Mel.”

 

She scoffed, nudging him lightly with her head and pulling the blanket up higher around his shoulders, “Wouldn’t you know it.”

 

“We had a good run,” He remarked fondly, eyes wandering over to the thick white of the clouds in the sky that had once been akin to their solid ground, “We were a good team, you and me.”

 

“Still are, I’d say,” She reminded him, “After all, we had to be in order to raise the pack of strays you decided to take in.”

 

The both of them chuckled amusedly at the reminder of their days aboard the Bus, Melinda running her thumb over his knuckles as she held his hand in her own. 

 

They’d always mattered a lot to each other. It made sense, really, that at the end of the day when everything had been said and done that they would still be next to one another. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been home for them for a long time, it had been all they had known but each other. 

 

Now they had a new home, and a family that they had found and built out of broken parts and parts that had not been fully formed when they had been found, out of the ashes. 

 

And they had each other. 

 

Phil held her closer to him, her head leaning against the top of his. 

 

“You mean a lot to me, Mel,” He murmured, eyes fluttering closed, “A lot.”

 

Tilting her head up and placing a kiss on his jaw, she whispered, “I love you.”

 


End file.
